Opinion Opinion: Trump Is Losing the Republican Congress

18:47 17 july 2017

18:47 17 july 2017 Source:
Roll Call

Newspaper editorials rip Trump Jr. over Russian meeting

Major newspapers ripped President Trump's eldest son and the Trump administration Tuesday in scathing editorials after Trump Jr. revealed a meeting between himself and a Kremlin-connected lawyer who promised dirt on Hillary Clinton.&nbsp;Several major news outlets ripped Trump's son as an "idiot" and "criminally stupid" Tuesday after Trump Jr. released emails between himself and music publicist Rob Goldstone prior to the meeting.

Fact Check. Opinion . Mailing List. About and Contact. Not to be overly presumptive about it, but the Republicans are going to lose the Senate in the 2018 midterms. Donald Trump is historically unpopular, meaning that the 2018 midterms will be fantastically ugly for the Republican Party.

Portman is a popular Republican from a state that routinely elects Republicans to Congress . Donald Trump is getting creamed in Ohio — badly losing the state by about as much as his party’s Senate candidate is winning it.

Editor’s note: The opinions in this article are the author’s, as published by our content partner, and do not necessarily represent the views of MSN or Microsoft.

President Donald Trump is losing the Republican Congress.

The June 2016 meeting between a Russian lawyer and Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort, among others, underscores what was obvious to anyone paying close attention to the election before ballots were cast: Russia wanted Trump to win, and Trump wanted Moscow’s help.

Until that meeting was revealed, though, there was a little wiggle room for Trump’s reluctant defenders to dismiss evidence of collusion as circumstantial. Now, the furthest some are willing to go is to say that the president’s son hasn’t committed the most egregious offense against the nation.

Obama and Bush WH ethics lawyers: Trump Jr. may be ‘liable for conspiracy’

Former ethics lawyers for Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama blasted President Trump's son in a joint op-ed Tuesday after he admitted to meeting with a Kremlin-linked attorney offering dirt on Hillary Clinton. Norman Eisen and Richard Painter wrote in the New York Times that Donald Trump Jr.'s actions raised a slough of new issues for former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and senior White House adviser Jared Kushner. "It raises a host of potential criminal and other legal violations for Donald Jr.

Opinion : Let the Senate Be the Senate Again Opinion : Jon Ossoff and the New Breed of Yellow Dog Democrats Opinion : Republicans ’ Biggest Problem in Georgia Isn’t the Special Election. Will they respectfully correct facts when Trump is wrong?

Donald Trump is the duly elected president of the United States — and nothing we know so far warrants even contemplating his removal. But being legitimate is a far cry from deserving automatic deference from either Republicans or Democrats in Congress .

From what reporters have unearthed — and from what Trump Jr. has acknowledged publicly — it’s reasonable to raise the question of whether there was an exchange on the table. Russia’s allies offered information and, according to Trump Jr.’s own account, wanted to talk about adoption — a topic inextricably tied to U.S. sanctions on Russia.

Step back: No one, regardless of political party, should be comfortable with the idea that a campaign would even entertain the idea of accepting help from a foreign adversary attempting to influence American policy.

That doesn’t mean Speaker Paul Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell or other Republican leaders will disavow the president or initiate impeachment proceedings anytime soon. But the benefit of the doubt — the willingness of serious GOP lawmakers to provide cover for the president amid the Russia story — is gone.

"The swamp's deeper than he thought": Trump supporters stick with him

At the Vigo County Fair in Indiana, one of the president's supporters says he is 200 percent satisfied with Trump's performanceBrenda Wilson says she is "not at all" troubled by the Russia investigation. "There's nothing to it," Brenda Wilson said.

The author is a Forbes contributor. The opinions expressed are those of the writer. Their voters have already displayed distaste for Trump – electing a Republican for Congress despite voting by larger numbers for Clinton.

First of all current members of congress who support Trump may find themselves losing support as well. His antics and words represent the Republican party hence if he loses support, congressional races will definitely be affected. No responses have been submitted. Related Opinions .

Like a 1960s movie

The question now is what the various players — the White House, Congress, special counsel Robert Mueller and American voters — ought to do about Trump’s ties to Russia. We are in the midst of a national crisis that puts Watergate in perspective as a botched break-in. Instead, it’s like we’re living through a mashup of Hollywood’s best (or worst) 1960s-era government-off-the-rails films: “The Manchurian Candidate,” “Seven Days in May” and “Dr. Strangelove,” to name a few. Let’s hope we don’t stumble into “Fail Safe,” in which American bombers are mistakenly dispatched to nuke Moscow.

At least back then, we knew that Russia was an enemy.

If Trump were acting rationally, he would have spent the last six months distancing himself from Russia rather than sucking up to President Vladimir Putin. He would understand that, given the collusion between his camp and a foreign power, he should do everything in his power to prove that he’s in neither the thrall nor the pocket of Moscow’s power elite.

Opinion | Trump is killing the Republican Party

When the GOP dies, the two-party duopoly that has strangled American politics for almost two centuries will finally end, too.I did not leave the Republican Party. The Republican Party left its senses. The political movement that once stood athwart history resisting bloated government and military adventurism has been reduced to an amalgam of talk-radio resentments. President Trump’s Republicans have devolved into a party without a cause, dominated by a leader hopelessly ill-informed about the basics of conservatism, U.S. history and the Constitution.

Joe Walsh, who represented Illinois' 8th district as a Republican congressman from 2011 to 2013, plans to arm himself with the erstwhile firearm for the inevitable insurrection, should Donald Trump lose to Hillary Clinton in November

He would promote harsher sanctions against Russia rather than blocking them. He would denounce Putin as a despot and a thug rather than praising him as a tough guy. Surely, his administration wouldn’t toy with the idea of creating a joint cybersecurity task force with a country that infiltrated American systems and used the information to try to throw a presidential election. And he certainly wouldn’t be praising his son for seeking ways to collaborate with an American adversary.

Instead, Trump is behaving as a man who believes he has more to lose by alienating Putin than by subordinating American interests to Russian interests. Is that because he simply admires Putin and Russia or because he is actually indebted to them? Does it matter? Unless Trump changes his behavior — and he’s shown zero indication so far that he will — Congress will have to intervene to stop him.

What Congress should do

Democrats in Congress would be wise to focus on their economic and social-policy platforms and let the media, federal investigators and the committees of jurisdiction dig into Trump’s Russia connections without the partisan flavor that has characterized so much of the discussion so far.

Trump Jr., ex-campaign head given nod to testify in Congress -Senator

President Donald Trump's eldest son and his former campaign chairman have been given approval by a U.S. special counsel to testify publicly to Congress as part of investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee said on Tuesday. U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein told Reuters the special counsel, former FBI director Robert Mueller, said that Donald Trump Jr. and Paul Manafort could testify. Mueller is looking into allegations by U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia interfered to help Trump win and possible collusion between Moscow and the Republican's campaign.

Will Trump , GOP Congress Do What’s Best for America? 76% of GOP Voters Rate Their Own Congress as Out of Touch. Seventy-six percent (76%) of GOP voters told Rasmussen Reports last March that Republicans in Congress have lost touch with their party’s base.

All is not lost without the presidency; Congress is still the power behind the throne. But a stronger party could rise up, and unlike many Trump supporters, the Republicans who will not vote for Trump will happily return to rebuild the GOP if they are invited.

Republicans on the Hill would similarly do well to keep moving in the direction they seem to be headed: A serious probe of whether Trump or members of his inner circle committed any crimes, high crimes or misdemeanors, coupled with only the faintest of protestations against allegations that he acted improperly.

From a legal perspective, the key to all of this is Mueller’s investigation. On that matter, time is on Trump’s side. He would be wise to begin distancing himself from anyone who met with Russians on his behalf instead of heaping approval on them. At the appropriate time, he may decide to issue a binder full of pardons. Until then, it makes sense to keep those folks at a safer distance.

But on a political level, Trump’s fate rests with the voters. If they abandon him en masse, Republicans in Congress will move on him. If the vast majority of the GOP base sticks with him, their representatives in Congress will simply damn him and his team with faint praise — like “this isn’t treason” — for the next 16 months.

Roll Call columnist Jonathan Allen is a co-author of “Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign” and has covered Congress, the White House and elections over the past 16 years.

Get breaking news alerts and more from Roll Call on your iPhone or your Android.

Just. Cut. Taxes. .
Republicans might as well do the one thing they seem capable of doing.In some alternate America, some Earth-2 (or Earth-27), there is a Republican Party capable of putting together a health care bill that isn’t incoherent and unpopular. In some distant, misty Neverland, there is a G.O.P. capable of balancing fiscal responsibility and limited-government principle with the creativity required to address working-class America’s social crisis.

Similar from the Web

Fact Check. Opinion . Mailing List. About and Contact. Not to be overly presumptive about it, but the Republicans are going to lose the Senate in the 2018 midterms. Donald Trump is historically unpopular, meaning that the 2018 midterms will be fantastically ugly for the Republican Party.

Portman is a popular Republican from a state that routinely elects Republicans to Congress . Donald Trump is getting creamed in Ohio — badly losing the state by about as much as his party’s Senate candidate is winning it.

Is There a ‘Red Line’ for Congressional Republicans With Trump ? - www.rollcall.com

Opinion : Let the Senate Be the Senate Again Opinion : Jon Ossoff and the New Breed of Yellow Dog Democrats Opinion : Republicans ’ Biggest Problem in Georgia Isn’t the Special Election. Will they respectfully correct facts when Trump is wrong?

Opinion : Truth the Pill for Trump ’s Dysfunction - www.rollcall.com

Donald Trump is the duly elected president of the United States — and nothing we know so far warrants even contemplating his removal. But being legitimate is a far cry from deserving automatic deference from either Republicans or Democrats in Congress .

The Republicans Who Will Stop Trump - www.forbes.com

The author is a Forbes contributor. The opinions expressed are those of the writer. Their voters have already displayed distaste for Trump – electing a Republican for Congress despite voting by larger numbers for Clinton.

First of all current members of congress who support Trump may find themselves losing support as well. His antics and words represent the Republican party hence if he loses support, congressional races will definitely be affected. No responses have been submitted. Related Opinions .

Former Republican congressman promises to lead an armed - theweek.com

Joe Walsh, who represented Illinois' 8th district as a Republican congressman from 2011 to 2013, plans to arm himself with the erstwhile firearm for the inevitable insurrection, should Donald Trump lose to Hillary Clinton in November

GOP Voters More Aligned With Trump Than Congress - www.rasmussenreports.com

Will Trump , GOP Congress Do What’s Best for America? 76% of GOP Voters Rate Their Own Congress as Out of Touch. Seventy-six percent (76%) of GOP voters told Rasmussen Reports last March that Republicans in Congress have lost touch with their party’s base.

A Trump trainwreck is the only thing that will save the Republican party - www.theguardian.com

All is not lost without the presidency; Congress is still the power behind the throne. But a stronger party could rise up, and unlike many Trump supporters, the Republicans who will not vote for Trump will happily return to rebuild the GOP if they are invited.

I’m shocked to see friends and relatives support a credibly accused sexual predator, all because he’s a Republican.We are in the midst of Advent, a season that celebrates Christ’s mother, a young woman who could have been publicly disgraced in her own time for false accusations about her […]

The former Alabama Supreme Court judge should prove that he was not lying about his past.After weeks of intense and bitter debate, Alabama voters finally rendered a verdict on the political ambitions of Roy Moore, one of the most divisive figures in the history of U.S. […]

That guy with the shovel following the elephants and Peter Strzok is Bob Mueller .John Linder is a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Georgia. He is a Republican. If you would like to be added to John Linder’s distribution list please send your email address […]

The obvious lesson of Roy Moore's election loss is that angry populism fueled by resentment of 'elites' is not the basis for a political movement.They told me I should keep my "elite media" nose out of it and let the voters in Alabama decide for themselves whether to elect Roy […]

This was a real sign of health.There are so many things I could say right now after watching Doug Jones defeat Roy Moore in the Senate race in Alabama, but for me it comes down to just two words: “Thank […]

Trump should have endorsed Brooks in the primary , but he endorsed Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s pro-amnesty candidate, Luther Strange, on the advice of his son-in-law. Because who knows Alabama politics better than Jared Kushner? (I guess we can scratch the expression, “As goes […]

Will the tax reform effort be the GOP's version of Obamacare? I don't know, and neither does anyone else. We have little idea what the final legislation will look like, and even if we did, it's hard to predict its overall effect. But there are some similarities already, […]

Roy Moore's defeat will send shock waves through the Republican Party as they contemplate the damage the White House reality show is doing to their brand, writes Julian ZelizerPresident Donald Trump should be sweating after the shocking outcome in Alabama's special election. Roy […]